Disaster Spawns Linkup To Warning System

OCOEE — In coming months, a 3-foot satellite dish will adorn the Fire Department, but passersby shouldn't assume the worst: It will be tuned exclusively to a weather channel.

Looking for more early warning in the wake of the February tornadoes, Ocoee is investing in a high-tech link to the National Weather Service. The Emergency Managers Weather Information Network takes feeds directly off two weather service satellites, translating electronic signals into warnings of impending severe weather.

The system isn't perfect, and the city will continue to rely on the Weather Service's regular radio warnings. But it provides another tool for the city to prepare for bad squalls, said Ron Strosnider, Ocoee's fire chief.

``It would probably give us a few more minutes to know what's coming,'' he said. ``If you can get a 10-minute jump on it, you can save a whole lot of lives.''

Ocoee is setting aside $6,000 for the system, which requires a dish, some related communications equipment and a personal computer. Once the software is configured, the computer can be set to sound an alarm depending on what information it receives from Weather Service satellites.

The system has been around for four years, providing a continuous broadcast of raw data compiled by the service, said Ken Bashford, the project's coordinator.

It is a result of Vice President Al Gore's desire to get more information out to the public following an early 1990s tornado that leveled a church full of people, Bashford said.

No weather service warning broadcast was available on local radio.

``If those people in the church would have had the warning that they needed, they might have had a chance to save their own lives,'' Bashford said.

It's up to the users to decide how to interpret the data with the equipment they purchase from private vendors.

About 3,000 emergency managers, fire and police departments, television and radio stations and ham radio operators use the system, said Jerry Johnson, president of the Maryland Radio Center Inc., the largest software vendor.

``An awful lot of them are buying into it, especially in Florida,'' he said.

Ocoee got the idea from Seminole County, which is already plugged into the system. Seminole re-broadcasts the information it gets from the satellite to Central Floridians who have invested in police radios. The radios are connected to their home computers, which run the specialized software to interpret the data.

The system is good now but is being updated to give more useful information to users, said Terry Schenk, Seminole County fire chief.

``When these storms are coming, they get a heads-up and see these things developing,'' he said.

Despite the relatively low cost, Ocoee had not moved toward buying into the system before the February tornadoes, which killed three people in Winter Garden and damaged some Ocoee homes.